home made boards

There were quite a few home made /backyard boards made in the late 60s and 70s. People thought why pay £30 for a board when I can get a blank and do it myself ! Most results were interesting, some a little way out, and some complete dogs ! Even the good ones usually have something a bit out, like a wierd nose, too much thickness or strange rocker. However on the plus side, it seems that when someone went to the effort of making their own board, they really went to town with the artwork- inlays including fabric and even newspaper, lettering, full tints, glitter tints, insects and butterflies laid into the resin etc etc. So the boards often have a certain charm and visual appeal even if they are a bit crude.
This a board from my collection, a home made board from the late 60s/ early70s , 6ft 8 , its a very rounded board with 50 50 rails all the way. I love the design on the deck though, and the features like the fin. Someone has drilled a hole straight through the board for the leash - I guess thats one way of doing it. The nose is also a bit funny, unnecessarily thick and up pointing ; whereas most noses of the time were pretty flat on the deck. Its a board I enjoy having in the collection, it survives as one person's determination to get out there and do their own thing - and good on 'em.

This board is Alex's although I sold it to him a few years ago , before the blog . Its an enigma that Alex calls 'the shoe'. I'm not quite sure what's going on here, but I guess its from around 1970 with one of the most pronounced s -decks in history, helped by a nose which could really have your eye out ! It has a cool and cosmic glitter tint on the underside, and a strange fin slot which goes straight through the board, which seems to have had a patch of cloth over the fin to keep it in place. Other than this there are no fixings for the fin. Mabye the surfer had to stand on the fin to keep it in place ?!

Neil Watson has come up with some ideas about the design of 'the shoe' -
'Regarding the old home-built boards you featured, my guess is that the "S" deck would be later than 1970, and I wonder if that excessively kicked nose could result from an early method of getting some kick into a flat blank. Before pre-shaped blanks were available, one method was to glass the bottom of the board, and while the resin was going off, to apply weight or downward pressure to the nose, maybe with a stick propped against the ceiling. The result could be unpredictable!
The fin box on that board with no apparent fixing method could be explained by the way fins could be jammed into a box with newspaper, which expanded to hold the fin tight when it got wet. That was the theory anyway. We lost a lot of fins, but they were often made from a plywood offcut anyway!' . Cheers Neil